Priming and theories of memory: A reply to Ratcliff and McKoon.

R. Ratcliff and G. McKoon (see record 1994-16298-001) attempt to buttress the case for non-spreading-activation models of associative priming by showing that first-response free association probabilities do not predict priming effects, and sequential effects in lexical decisions are predicted by at least one non-spreading-activation model. The author argues that their attempt to predict priming from free association is not informative because they did not propose a model of how association in memory is manifested in free association, these predictions depended on assumptions that are not consistent with the model tested, the compound-cue model is a poor model of sequential effects, and non-spreading-activation models still cannot explain the absence of inhibition following nonword primes when responses to the primes are not required. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Priming effects that span an intervening unrelated word: Implications for models of memory representation and retrieval.

Several studies have reported priming effects that span an intervening unrelated word (E. Davelaar and M. Coltheart, 1975; D. E. Meyer et al, 1972). More recently, other investigators have suggested that such relatedness effects are the result of postaccess processes (P. B. Gough et al, 1981; M. E. Masson, 1991; R. Ratcliff and G. McKoon, 1988). In fact, these investigators claim that when procedures are used that discourage the use of postaccess processes, relatedness effects do not span intervening unrelated words. The present experiments demonstrate reliable relatedness effects with procedures that eliminate postaccess processes. These results are consistent with the notion of spreading activation among local representations in memory. Implications for the issue of local vs distributed representations are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Task-set switching and long-term memory retrieval.

The authors tested the hypothesis of a close relationship between the intentional component of task-set switching ("advance reconfiguration;" R. D. Rogers & S. Monsell, 1995) and long-term memory (LTM) retrieval. Consistent with this hypothesis, switch costs are reported to be larger when the switched-to task involves high retrieval demands (i.e., retrieval of episodic information) than when it involves low retrieval demands (i.e., retrieval of semantic information). In contrast, switch costs were not affected by a primary-task difficulty manipulation unrelated to intentional retrieval demands (Experiment 2). Also, the retrieval-demand effect on switch costs was eliminated when time for advanced preparation or task cues explicitly specifying the task rules were provided (Experiment 3). Overall, results were consistent with the hypothesis that the intentional switch-cost component reflects the time demands of retrieving appropriate task rules from LTM. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Priming in recognition memory for categorized lists.

Previous research on primed recognition of categorized lists has shown 2 discrepant patterns of results. The reasons for that discrepancy are investigated by focusing on the differences between the tasks used to effect priming in the various previous studies. The 1st 2 experiments, with a total of 48 university students, showed that lure processing was facilitated when priming was achieved through another recognition test item, whereas inhibition was obtained if a semantic category judgment task was performed on the priming items. Thus, both patterns could be reproduced under nearly identical circumstances, with the type of prime processing being the only difference. Two additional experiments, with a total of 42 university students, served to generalize the inhibition found in the 2nd experiment to other semantic priming tasks. The type of processing done on the prime determined whether inhibition or facilitation of lure rejection was obtained. Inhibition was obtained when a semantic task was used to prime a recognition judgment, whereas facilitation resulted from priming with an episodic task. The results are interpreted in the framework of the semantic/episodic distinction. (43 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Attention and retrieval from long-term memory.

Conducted 9 experiments with 152 female volunteers (mean age 44.4 yrs) to investigate the disrupting effect of a secondary task on retrieval from long-term memory. Exps I–V studied the influence of concurrent card sorting or digit span on free recall or paired-associate learning of word lists. Exp VI explored recall probability using a recognition paradigm in which accuracy and latency could be measured simultaneously. Exp VII explored the latency effect with a semantic memory paradigm, and Exp VIII required Ss to make semantic category judgments while retaining sequences of 6 digits. Exp IX examined the effect of concurrent digital load on the rate of generating items from semantic categories. Overall findings reveal that a demanding concurrent task did not reduce the probability of retrieving an item from semantic or episodic memory. However, concurrent load during learning substantially effected recall performance. A concurrent task during retrieval did not have a clear effect on latency. The contrast between the pattern shown by errors and by that shown by latencies suggests that attempts to estimate the attentional demands of any task should be interpreted with considerable caution when based on a single measure, such as performance errors, performance latency, or a response to a probe RT signal. (38 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Rat hippocampus and memory for places of changing significance.

In 3 experiments, a total of 32 inbred DA Agouti and 14 outbred Sprague-Dawley rats were tested once daily on a four-choice delayed matching-to-sample task with a water reward. Each day the correct place changed, and a single exposure to it was provided on information trials. Lesions of the hippocampal formation that involved the fornix or dorsal hippocampus bilaterally produced a severe impairment in the performance of previously trained Ss. By contrast, lesions of the ventral hippocampus did not preclude reacquisition of the place-memory task. Some otherwise impaired Ss with fornical lesions were able to find the water when aided by nonplace cues that consistently signaled reward. Reducing the number of choices from 4 to 2 did not aid the impaired Ss. Certain lesions of the hippocampal formation in the rat produce a deficit appropriately described as amnesia. The memory deficit is consistent with a role for the hippocampus in processing of place information and shows some parallels to the amnesia seen in persons with temporal lobe lesions. (43 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Attentional limits in memory retrieval.

The hypothesis that episodic memory retrieval can occur in parallel with other cognitive processes was tested in 2 experiments. Participants memorized words and then performed speeded cued recall (Experiment 1) or speeded yes-no recognition (Experiment 2) in a dual-task situation. The psychological refractory period design was used: The participant was presented with a single test item at various stimulus onset asynchronies (SOAs; 50-1,000 ms) after a tone was presented in an auditory-manual 2-alternative choice reaction task. Reducing the SOA increased the memory task reaction times. This slowing was additive with the effect of variables slowing retrieval in the memory task. The results indicate that memory retrieval is delayed by central processes in the choice task, arguing that the central bottleneck responsible for dual-task interference encompasses memory retrieval as well as response selection. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Retrieving information from memory: Spreading-activation theories versus compound-cue theories.

T. P. McNamara (1992) attacked compound-cue theories on a number of grounds. Using free association as a measure of distance between concepts in memory, he argued that compound-cue theories cannot explain mediated priming effects. The authors show that free-association production probabilities do not accurately predict priming effects, either directly or in the context of current spreading-activation models, and so remove the basis for McNamara's criticism. McNamara also claimed that compound-cue theories cannot account for the sequential effects of items that precede a target on responses to the target, but the authors show that sequential effects are consistent with compound-cue models if the target item is weighted more heavily than preceding items in the calculation of familiarity that determines response time and accuracy for the target. It is concluded that, although compound-cue and spreading-activation theories are both consistent with available data, the compound-cue theory, having less freedom, has passed more stringent tests. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Syntactic constraints in the retrieval of homophone orthography.

In this experiment, syntactic constraints on the retrieval of orthography were investigated using homophones embedded in sentence contexts. Participants typed auditorily presented sentences that included a contextually appropriate homophone that either shared part of speech with its homophone competitor (i.e., was syntactically unambiguous) or had a different part of speech (was syntactically ambiguous). Each homophone was preceded by an unrelated word or a prime; primes were orthographically related to the competitor and shared or differed from the competitor’s part of speech. For syntactically unambiguous homophones, more errors occurred overall, and priming increased errors independent of the prime’s part of speech. For syntactically ambiguous homophones, priming occurred only following primes that shared part of speech with the competitor. These results demonstrate that written homophone errors can occur during lemma retrieval or during orthographic encoding, with the particular stage depending on the syntactic ambiguity of the homophone to be produced. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Episodic effects on picture identification: Implications for theories of concept learning and theories of memory.

The effects of differences in study processing on free recall of picture names and on generalization in picture identification were investigated. Experience with degraded pictures produced poorer subsequent free recall of picture names than did naming intact pictures. For the test of picture identification, pictures that were identical to a studied picture, pictures that shared a name with a studied picture (same name), and new test pictures were presented, and the amount of clarification required to identify a picture was measured. Experience with degraded pictures produced better subsequent identification of identical test pictures but poorer later identification of same-name test pictures than did naming intact pictures. The importance of these episodic effects for theories of concept learning and theories of memory is discussed. It is argued that distinctions between memory systems (e.g., episodic-semantic) must be couched in terms of a theory of concept learning and that the data are inconsistent with a simple distinction. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Simpson's paradox and the analysis of memory retrieval.

According to Simpson's paradox (E. H. Simpson, 1951), if 2 or more contingency tables are collapsed into one, the resulting table may show a relationship between variables different from those shown by any of the original tables. Thus, a positive or negative relationship or stochastic independence may be shown by every component table, but be masked, in the collapsed table, by one of the other characteristics. This paradox has implications for the analysis of memory retrieval, particularly when the focus of interest is the relationship between success and failure on 2 retrieval attempts. Several recent issues in the memory literature are discussed in this connection, with emphasis on confounding effects of S differences, item differences, and S-item interactions. (23 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Priming from category members on retrieval of other category members: Positive and negative effects.

In four experiments subjects retrieved exemplars of categories from short definitions. Definitions were preceded by primes that were other exemplars from the category, were neutral (asterisks), or were correct. Only positive priming from related primes was found for latency to retrieve the defined word correctly, and this was not a function of whether primes were ever correct. Some negative priming was found in error probabilities following different prime types, but errors were not more likely when the prime was closely related to the word to be retrieved, so negative priming was not due to spreading inhibition. The data were interpreted in terms of spreading activation theories, with positive priming from related words on latency to respond, correctly or incorrectly. When the response is incorrect, it may then be difficult to retrieve the correct response; this may account for the negative effects of semantically related primes reported by others. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Parallel memory retrieval in dual-task situations: II. Episodic memory.

Three experiments asked whether subjects could retrieve information from a 2nd stimulus while they retrieved information from a 1st stimulus. Ss performed recognition judgments on each of 2 words that followed each other by 0, 250, and 1,000 msec (Experiment 1) or 0 and 300 msec (Experiments 2 and 3). In each experiment, reaction time to both stimuli was faster when the 2 stimuli were both targets (on the study list) or both lures (not on the study list) than when 1 was a target and the other was a lure. Each experiment found priming from the 2nd stimulus to the lst when both stimuli were targets. Reaction time to the 1st stimulus was faster when the 2 targets came from the same memory structure at study (columns in Experiment l; pairs in Experiment 2; sentences in Experiment 3) than when they came from different structures. This priming is inconsistent with discrete serial retrieval and consistent with parallel retrieval. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Parallel memory retrieval in dual-task situations: I. Semantic memory.

Can participants retrieve information about the 2nd of 2 stimuli while they are processing the 1st? Four experiments suggest they can. Reaction times to the 1st stimulus were faster if it came from the same category as the 2nd than if it came from a different category. This category-match effect was observed for letter-digit discrimination (Experiment 1), magnitude and parity judgments about digits (Experiment 2), and lexical decisions (Experiment 3). Experiment 4 showed that the 2nd stimulus could semantically prime the 1st. The category-match effect was observed only when the same task was performed on the 2 stimuli. When the task changed from the Ist stimulus to the 2nd, there was no advantage of a category match. This dependence on task set may explain previous failures to find parallel retrieval. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Long-term outcomes of memory retrieval under stress.

Previous studies have found impairing effects of stress hormones on memory retrieval. So far, it is unknown whether these impairments are temporary, persistent throughout time, or whether the strength of the memory trace changes after retrieval because of the effects of stress hormones on memory processes during retrieval. In the present study, delayed cued recall (6 months after initial learning) was compared between male participants who had retrieved previously learned word pairs during stress or a control condition. Retrieval (with or without stress) had taken place either 1 day or 5 weeks after initial encoding. The group that had retrieved words under stress 5 weeks after encoding performed worse on long-term recall than the comparable control group. However, when words were retrieved under stress 1 day after encoding, no long-term effect was found, although performance at 6 months in relation to performance under stress was slightly increased compared to the control group. These results support previous findings in animals that stress may affect memory during reactivation. It further suggests that time intervals between encoding and reactivation may play an important role. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Effects of motivations on the availability and retrieval of memory traces.

A review which analyzes a vast array of studies relating motivation and memory is presented. Investigations in which the motivational manipulation occurred during trace formation are distinguished from studies in which the manipulation occurred during trace storage or trace retrieval. Includes a series of investigations by the author which varied the incentive for retaining stimuli. The general conclusion is that many studies in the area are methodologically inadequate, and have yielded conflicting results. However, there are studies which provide strong evidence that memory can be influenced by nonassociative factors. (3 p. ref.) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Effects of alcohol intoxication on metamemory and on retrieval from long-term memory.

In a balanced-placebo design, 160 male moderate to heavy drinkers (aged 21–35 yrs) expected either an alcohol drink or placebo drink and consumed either alcohol (1 ml/kg) or placebo. Shortly thereafter, each S attempted to recall the answers to general-information questions (e.g., "What is the capital of Chile?"), made confidence judgments about the accuracy of recall, made feeling-of-knowing judgments on all nonrecalled items, and received a recognition test. Unanticipated outcomes included the following: (a) Alcohol intoxication significantly hindered recall from long-term memory, contrary to previous conclusions that alcohol does not affect retrieval; (b) Ss' expectancy of alcohol had no significant effect on memory or metamemory performance, contrary to its established effects on other kinds of performance; (c) Alcohol intoxication produced no significant overconfidence in judgments about recall or in feeling-of-knowing judgments, contrary to the overconfidence produced in other kinds of judgments such as an intoxicated person's assessment of his/her driving ability. This last outcome implies that alcohol intoxication does not produce a general lowering of the threshold for confidence but rather has effects that are situation specific. (41 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Priming 4.5-month-old infants to use height information by enhancing retrieval.

How do infants select and use information that is relevant to the task at hand? Infants treat events that involve different spatial relations as distinct, and their selection and use of object information depends on the type of event they encounter. For example, 4.5-month-olds consider information about object height in occlusion events, but infants typically fail to do so in containment events until they reach the age of 7.5 months. However, after seeing a prime involving occlusion, 4.5-month-olds became sensitive to height information in a containment event (Experiment 1). The enhancement lasted over a brief delay (Experiment 2) and persisted even longer when infants were shown an additional occlusion prime but not an object prime (Experiment 3). Together, these findings reveal remarkable flexibility in visual representations of young infants and show that their use of information can be facilitated not by strengthening object representations per se but by strengthening their tendency to retrieve available information in the representations. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)